What is one to do, when you find such a specimen on school grounds? Students across grade levels took a mini fieldtrip to the pond on campus to examine the skeleton. The BIG question for everyone, including teachers was: WHAT kind of animal was it? What an opportunity and teachable moment for students and teachers to collaborate in the investigation process and find out.

We had different approaches to the investigation:

Approach A:

took photos of skeleton and xeroxed copies for students to take home and do research involving parents

researched online for different images from animal skeletons to compare

Note being left directly on image, identifying the three teeth being typical of a raccoon.

Another tip came and suggested to upload the image to a site called “idthis.org”

The Twitter network also jumped in and retweeted (RT) the request for help onward to their network

Guesses and further questions what animal it could be flooded in

Suggestion of getting in touch with experts who could help our investigation along or expert’s guesses:

Links to more Resources:

I am amazed, again, at the power of the network. As the investigation spread across our school campus, so it did across the network. Having a support team, a flood of resources and experts at your fingertips (literally), it is truly an example how learning, research, has changed through the collaboration, connecting and communication tools of the social network era.

I am happy to report, that all three approaches of research came to the same conclusion.

Our skeleton seems to be a raccoon skeleton.

Our librarian has collected the specimen and is shipping it, as we speak, to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Services, who have offered to clean it up, give us a positive identification and ship it back to us.

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25 thoughts on “CSI Twitter- Crime Scene Investigation”

Silvia, what a fantastic activity! I found the former science teacher in me thoroughly enjoying being part of the collective detective work. Not only did you introduce problem solving but you also illustrated so well that multiple paths can produce similar and validated results.

Kudos to you and your students on a wonderful activity and experience. I can’t help but wonder who in your class is now fired up about forensic science.

Experts come to help kids “clean-up” and do CSI thingies with it. Find out how it died, and knowing info about it in the process like habitat, food, predators, level in the food chain, population (near extinction or overpopulated) etc.,

Kids examine skeleton, write essays about it and the experience, etc.

Share find with other grade levels. Maybe even high school! And share everything you did that others across the world might find valuable.

An absolute cracker of a learning activity and one that shows the power of a personal learning network in a very powerful way. Congratulations to you all for such an intersting story on solving a problem and especially for sharing it.